The Virtue of Hope: How Confidence in God Can Lead You to Heaven

By Philip Bochanski

In this marvelous series of reflections on Hope, adapted from a series of talks, Father Philip Bochanski not only lays out what hope is but also shows how we can exercise this theological virtue, through being daring, changing our ways, serving the Lord, struggling, suffering, and praying. Beginning with the Book of Genesis and proceeding through the Gospels, Aquinas, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, he examines how hope directs us to our ultimate goal of life with God and gives us the strength and perseverance to attain it.

Bochanski's fascinating stories of “Heroes of Hope”- inspiring saints such as St. Augustine and St. Teresa of Calcutta-show us how these familiar names learned to hope through moments of intense personal difficulty and crisis. Bochanski also tells fascinating stories about the lives of individuals like Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, St. Gianna Beretta Molla, and Chiara Luce Badano, showing how these seemingly ordinary Catholic laypeople applied their hope in God to the challenges of their state in life and the modern world.

The Virtue of Hope is excellent spiritual reading for everyone, an instruction manual for how to grow in hope and in bravery in the face of life's challenges. It is a clarion call that hope must not be merely theoretical, but must “lead us to a deeper relationship with God, an encounter with the One who loves us and calls us to friendship with Himself.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: TAN Books
• Release date: Sep 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781505114201

Book preview

Hope

1

To Live a Daring Life

Life at the beginning of the twenty-first century can seem challenging indeed. I wonder sometimes how many people still have the courage to read the paper or watch the evening news when the headline and teaser to every story seem to reiterate a very limited vocabulary almost incessantly: Crisis—Turmoil—Unrest—Violence—War—Poverty—Hunger—Disease—Addiction—Crime. These realities may not be new (indeed, in many ways they are almost as old as humanity itself, for they are as old as sin), but all too often they affect our daily lives, our neighborhoods, and our homes, and they threaten to consume the little part of the world that belongs to us and to those we love. They leave us feeling overwhelmed, out-matched, even desperate. Small wonder then that during the elections for president of the United States in 2008, one of the most memorable and perhaps most effective political advertisements simply showed a stylized portrait of one of the candidates accompanied by a single word in bold letters: HOPE.

But it is hardly coincidental that, at almost the same time, Pope Benedict XVI was addressing the universal Church with something much more substantial than a campaign poster, yet centered on the same theme. His encyclical letter Spe Salvi, which is translated Saved in Hope, was written as an attempt to do what Saint Peter exhorts the early Christians to do in his first letter, tucked away at the end of the New Testament—Always be ready, he says, to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope (1 Pt 3:15). Writing at such a momentous time in human history—full of potential but also dealing with such difficult crises—the Holy Father used this encyclical to reflect on Christian hope and the way that it transforms and fulfills all of our individual, earthly hopes by placing them in their proper context. When we understand the reasons for our hope, the Holy Father seems convinced—when we know where it comes from and where it’s leading us—then we will have the strength to persevere along life’s road, however difficult our particular path may seem at any given moment.

This book has the same goal as Pope Benedict’s encyclical: understanding the reasons that Christians have for hope and how to put that hope into practice. We’re going to accomplish this goal in two ways because, as the Holy Father explains, a proper understanding of hope has to include two aspects. Of course, we have to appreciate the theological and philosophical foundation for what we believe about the Christian life and our relationship with God, because hope is a fundamental part of living out this relationship. We’ll rely on Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church, especially as we can find them in the Catechism and the writings and homilies of the popes. We’ll also rely on the work of saintly theologians and philosophers like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, as well as some of their more modern interpreters, and we’ll find that we can learn a thing or two from pre-Christian philosophers like Aristotle and Plato as well.

Just as important as this theological foundation, however, is the fact that, as Pope Benedict points out in Spe Salvi, To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope…. Hope ensues from a real encounter with this God.¹ Our pursuit of hope cannot remain something merely theoretical; it has to lead us to a deeper relationship with God, an encounter with the One who loves us and calls us to friendship with himself. As we consider God’s plan for us, we are going to see that we are created precisely for this encounter and this friendship—it is our destiny—and that this is the reason that God gives us the virtue of hope in the first place.

Along the way, we are going to examine the lives of men and women—some from the early centuries of Christianity, some from our own day—who encountered God in moments of personal difficulty—sometimes in the midst of extreme crises—and in the process learned valuable lessons about hope. As we hear their life stories, and often their own words, these heroes of hope won’t just inspire us. They’ll also remind us that, as Pope Benedict once told an interviewer, there are as many ways to God as there are people² and that we, too, may find our way to an encounter with him as long as we hold on to our hope.

Defining Virtue

We should begin our discussion of the virtue of hope by examining what we mean by virtue. It’s one of those words that we use quite often, without stopping to make sure that everyone understands the same thing when they say it. Sometimes we use it in a half-joking, chiding tone, reminding someone who’s about to lose her temper that patience is a virtue! At other times, virtue and vice take the form of the tiny comic angel and devil on the shoulders of someone trying to make a decision—and in these depictions, somehow virtue never seems to appear quite as strong or quite as interesting. Whatever our preconceived cultural ideas of virtuous people or virtuous actions might be, we’ll find that the classic philosophical and theological definition of virtue is actually quite specific and that each of its various aspects has something important to teach us as we learn how to become more hopeful people.

The notion of virtue can be found long before Christianity in the works of the great Greek philosophers, although they used it somewhat differently than Christians do today. For thinkers like Aristotle and Plato, virtue was equivalent to aretḗ, a word that connotes excellence in the sense of being fulfilled or living up to one’s potential. Aretḗ in this sense does not necessarily imply anything moral: A house that is in perfect proportion, symmetrical and beautifully adorned, has the aretḗ of a house. The dog that wins Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club does so because he possesses the aretḗ of his breed. A shoemaker who makes really excellent shoes does so with aretḗ; an athlete who wins championships does likewise.

Of course, the philosophers did acknowledge a special kind of aretḗ, what we may call ethical virtues, that is necessary for human beings who live together in society and therefore must work for the common good. Aristotle said that these ethical virtues were found by striving for the mean—the good quality that is the proper balance between two vices, which could be considered opposite extremes. Be neither cowardly nor foolhardy, he said, but find your aretḗ in courage; don’t be stingy, but don’t be extravagant either: the proper measure is generosity. Achieving human excellence, for Aristotle, meant learning to hit this mark repeatedly, which requires deliberate choices and lots of practice because the bad alternatives at either extreme tend to be more attractive and usually require less effort. But when one perseveres in exerting the effort, acquiring aretḗ brings great rewards. Not only does it make a person able to contribute to and to do good in the society in which he is living, but, more importantly, it leads to his personal fulfillment and therefore his real happiness.

In his important work called the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle lists a number of ethical virtues that he considered important because they helped a person to do good and to be good in society; they include such things as courage, generosity, gentleness, friendliness, and truthfulness. A few important things stand out about a list like this. First of all, no one can argue that qualities like these are important to getting along with other people; they are things that everyone ought to try to put into practice to some degree. Although we may be accustomed to associate them with a particularly Christian attitude—Jesus was certainly generous and gentle, friendly and truthful—one doesn’t have to be a Christian, or indeed to have any religion at all, to see the value in these virtues or to put them into practice. In a very real sense, they are completely natural—we may simply call them human virtues—and plenty of secularists and atheists practice them, although their motivations may be different from believers who do the same.

There is a second point to be made about these human virtues, however. As natural as they may be, even self-evident and almost inborn, there is always room for development. Remember where we started with this discussion of aretḗ: it is related to fulfillment, which implies striving toward a goal. This is clear when we are talking about forms of excellence that are not related to morals or ethics; for example, the aretḗ of a musician or a baseball player. Some people are born with a certain measure of natural talent—indeed, some children have so much innate ability that we call them prodigies. Others have to work step-by-step to develop each and every skill. But even inborn abilities only go so far, and neither the natural nor the slow learner are getting anywhere near the perfection of aretḗ without practice.

The same goes for the virtues. Some people may be more generous by nature; others may find that they have an innate capacity for friendship. These human virtues come easily to them, to a certain degree. But the nature of a virtue, as we have seen, implies striving toward the goal of human perfection so that whether a particular virtue comes naturally or goes against our inclinations, it must be acquired by deliberate effort, like the musician practicing her scales or the athlete working on his pitch. Perhaps this is part of the reason that the ancient Romans used the word virtus to translate the Greek word aretḗ. Virtus is derived from vir, the Latin word for male or masculine, and thus connotes something strong or powerful. It takes a great deal of strength to persevere in acquiring the virtues, and to exercise them day by day.

How are the virtues to be developed, whatever their source? Let’s go back to the beginning of our discussion of aretḗ—we said that it doesn’t necessarily apply only to moral qualities but could connote any sort of excellence. Well, how does an architect construct a building with aretḗ? By studying the laws of proportion, learning about building materials and techniques, comparing structures to see what they have in common, and most importantly by trial and error, he eventually moves from building crooked walls to straighter ones, to solid houses and great masterpieces that embody the ideal of what a building ought to be.

How does a champion breeder arrive at a specimen that wins Best in Show, that has the aretḗ of its breed? By carefully selecting pairs of dogs; looking for the best, most ideal characteristics in their offspring; setting aside those offspring with less desirable traits; and continuing this process over several generations with dedicated attention and focus. How does a baseball player develop the aretḗ that’s equivalent to excellence in his sport? By breaking down complex maneuvers into their basic components and mastering them one at a time, then doing them over and over and over again until the mind and the muscles develop memory and endurance and can carry out the required tasks more and more efficiently.

The same approach is going to apply to the ethical virtues. Although the particular kind of aretḗ that we are talking about—courage, for example, or kindness or truthfulness—may not seem as tangible as a pitch or a dog or a house, this shouldn’t lead us to think that pursuing these virtues is something simply theoretical, something that’s all in the mind. The ancient concept of aretḗ makes it clear that even the ethical virtues—maybe especially the ethical virtues—are acquired and perfected in very practical ways; we learn by doing.

A person doesn’t become courageous simply by thinking brave thoughts. Rather, he or she has to make an effort to actually be brave in concrete situations that require bravery. This is no small task since the very fact that bravery is required means that the person is probably scared—indeed, that the situation itself is inherently scary. So, like the architect who first builds a few crooked walls before he learns to build straight ones, a person trying to learn to be brave might miss the mark, probably more than once, on the way to learning it. Like the athlete developing his skills, the person acquiring ethical virtues will need to start small and do what’s possible over and over, building both endurance and memory in the process. Like the breeder bringing out good traits and getting rid of bad ones, he’ll need to pay close attention over time to what works and what doesn’t, trying to hold on to the positive and let it have more and more influence in his decisions and actions. The acquisition of virtue in this way is a process, one that doesn’t happen overnight … but one that bears reliable results if a person is willing to put in the effort and stick with it.

There is one more thing that we should notice about this discussion of the virtues. So far, with Aristotle, we have been talking about aretḗ from the perspective of striving, fulfillment, practice, perseverance, acquiring, achieving. But all of this kind of language leads to one necessary conclusion. If we are striving, we must be striving for something; if we are looking for fulfillment, there must be something specific in which we are destined to be fulfilled. In other words, all of this discussion implies that there must be some goal toward which we are meant to be heading, and some standards or benchmarks by which we may measure our progress.

Aristotle says that the ultimate goal of our actions must be the Supreme Good³; however, he goes on to make it clear that the ultimate good of which he is speaking is the good of politics; that is, the good of the society. For even though it be the case, he explained, that the Good is the same for the individual and for the state, nevertheless, the good of the state is manifestly a greater and more perfect good.⁴ This is a lofty sentiment, as far as it goes; plenty of systems of ethical thought have been built on similar notions that the reason that human beings should strive for virtue is in order to be good citizens, in order to be able to do good and to be good in civil society. It is a kind of moral philosophy that is readily accessible and readily applicable to any political system, especially secular and pluralistic societies like our own that desire not to promote specifically religious moral codes.

However, this means that for us, the ancient notion of virtue as aretḗ, and the supreme good as the good of civil society, is only a starting point and not the ultimate answer. Don’t get me wrong: the lessons we have learned so far about how virtue works are extremely important as we go forward. But just as important for us to understand is the purpose that underlies our pursuit of the virtues, the reason and the destiny for which we were created and to which we are called by our Creator. In the next section, we’ll examine the nature of this call, and we will see that understanding it makes all the difference to the way that we live the virtues.

Called to Communion

We were discussing the fact that the word usually used in classical times to translate aretḗ into Latin was virtus, a word that connotes power—in this sense, the powers or faculties that belong to a human being—intellect, will, the senses, strength and desire, and other such things. This was connected to the idea of the repetitive nature of acquiring a virtue—think of the athlete developing muscle memory by practicing the same motion over and over and over again. He uses his natural powers—his virtus—to acquire his skill. You’ll remember that we said that the same idea applied to acquiring ethical virtues: to become courageous, for example, a person needed to try to do brave things, and to keep trying even though he missed the mark occasionally. If a person used his powers rightly, the philosophers concluded, over time he would develop them to the point that he could consistently do good and be good in society.

Thomas Aquinas, the saintly theologian and philosopher of the thirteenth century who did so much to shape the Catholic Church’s theological mindset, often used a different word to speak of the virtues: habitus. This means just what it sounds like: for Aquinas and for the Catholic Church, virtues are habits—firm dispositions of the soul that guide a person’s decisions and actions. In a certain way, a habitus is very much like a virtus. Both become effective by being exercised, by being put into practice repetitively in concrete actions. Yet there is a very important distinction. To say that virtue comes from the natural powers or faculties of the person seems to imply that the only thing necessary is enough willpower and strength to get the job done. The notion of habit means something else. As habits of the soul, the virtues act as a kind of supplement and guide to a person’s own natural abilities and faculties, leading them in the right direction, keeping them on track, assisting them to accomplish things they can’t do on their own. But it’s clear that these habits come not from a person’s own strength but from some other source.

There’s an important reason that this is true, and it’s related to the fundamental reality of what it means to be human. Right from the very start, right from the moment that our first parents were created by God, the Scriptures reveal that God had a plan for the human race—that we are created with a destiny, a call, a vocation. And right from the beginning, it is clear that this vocation is supernatural; that is, it goes well beyond our natural abilities to attain it on our own—sometimes even beyond our natural ability to comprehend it on our own. The goal to which God is calling us has always been out of our reach if we were left to ourselves, and God knows that, so he has never meant to leave us to ourselves. Rather, he has provided the virtues and called us to acquire them so that, as Aquinas says, we may follow God more steadfastly, more readily, and with greater joy.⁵

Understanding and appreciating our supernatural destiny makes all the difference in how we live our lives, and whether or not we look for the virtues and put them into practice. To discover what that destiny is, of course, we need look no farther than the first page of the Bible. The stories of Creation that are related at the beginning of the book of Genesis have a great deal to say about who God